In my own words
About Vanessa
The sharp, messy practicality of everyday life—and the vast, unseen mystery of what lies beyond it.
Vanessa Inn · Photography by Christopher Michel
I think of myself as a dual citizen of two worlds: the sharp, messy practicality of everyday life and the vast, unseen mystery of what lies beyond it.
When I was almost five years old, I nearly drowned in a lake and had a near-death experience. I came away from it with a knowing I couldn’t have explained then: that beneath the life we can see is something larger—an underlying reality of profound Love, connection, and goodness.
Then I went back to being a little girl.
I grew up. I fell in love. I became a mother. I built a career. I made mistakes. I experienced extraordinary joy and devastating loss. And I learned, as we all do, that knowing something deeply and knowing how to live it are two very different things.
For more than 45 years, I’ve had the extraordinary privilege of sitting with people in the middle of their own lives.
More than 40,000 conversations have taken me into the places where being human gets real: love and work, fear and courage, relationships and change, ambition and meaning, creativity and loss.
I’ve worked with people from many different walks of life—from those building careers on the world stage to those whose lives unfold far from the public eye. The circumstances may be very different. The human questions underneath them rarely are.
People come to me when something hurts or isn’t working. But they also come because they want something—to create extraordinary work, build a meaningful career, deepen a relationship, make a difficult choice, take a risk, or bring something into the world that matters deeply to them.
My work has always lived in both places: pain and desire, healing and ambition, loss and creation—the mess and the magic of being human.
After all these years, people still fascinate me.
So does life.
Vanessa and Ash
I love dogs and trees and oceans. I adore my grandsons. I love a conversation that goes somewhere neither person expected. I love the moment someone sees something differently and suddenly has more room to move.
I’ve lived through profound grief, and I still love being here.
I’m still surprised by beauty. I’m still curious about mystery.
Maybe more than anything, I’m interested in what it means to be fully human for the little while we’re here, on this small, extraordinary planet, in a universe we barely understand.
The work itself
How I Work
My work has never been based on a formula.
I listen closely—to the problem someone brings me, certainly, but also to what may be underneath it. I ask questions. I challenge when challenge is useful. I pay attention to what someone may already know but hasn’t quite been able to hear.
Sometimes the work is about healing or letting go. Sometimes it’s about getting very clear about what you want and finding the courage to go after it.
Often, it’s both.
I’m interested in what makes us come alive—and in how we live what we know in the middle of this wonderfully messy business of being human.
That curiosity has taken me from decades of private conversations to talks, public conversations, gatherings, and writing.
There is something in you that knows who you really are. The work is learning to live from it.
The work of a lifetime is not becoming someone else. It’s becoming more of who you really are.
Love,
Vanessa
Explore my work
The conversation continues.
Talks and conversations about what it means to be fully human.
Love Notes